Large Project Engagement Management - Best Practices Tool Kit
This guide is intended to establish a common approach and a set of best practices, standardized tools, and processes for practice-wide adoption. The primary audience for this guide is Engagement Managers, though team members of all levels will likely find value in the guide too. Senior staff can utilize this to proactively establish and maintain strong teams that are efficient and client focused. Junior- and mid-level staff can look to this guidance to better understand available project tools and effective practices in engagement management and issue escalation.
Engagement Management Checklist
Use the Engagement Management Checklist at key points throughout the lifecycle of the project, including: 1) Proposal submission, 2) Team kick-off, 3) Mid-point in the engagement. While not all the questions in this checklist might be applicable to your particular engagement, these questions are meant to serve as a guide for the process of managing your project.
Project Management Guidance and FAQs
Customize this Project Management Guidance and FAQs document to address tactical questions expected to be raised by team members. Include topics/questions that are relevant to your team and adjust the placeholders denoted in brackets.
This tool is designed for internal use by Manatt teams to manage the scope of work, including defining and tracking tasks/deliverables, task owners, and progress/due dates. The tool complements the engagement management dashboard and should be maintained by the engagement manager, lead partner and workstream leads.
This tool is designed for internal use by Manatt teams to complement the workplan and support monitoring engagement progress against the scope to ensure client expectations are met and manage project risks. The primary audiences for the dashboard may include the engagement manager, lead partner and workstream leads, though it may also be shared with the full Manatt team to communicate current progress across the entire project. While this document provides a template for the dashboard, it can be adapted to meet the unique needs of each project.
This tool is designed for internal use by Manatt teams to track project status and next steps to support client reporting.
This tool is designed for internal use by Manatt teams to proactively manage resources and deliver project on budget. This can be leveraged to develop a budget tracking tool that enable project and workstream leads to track budget performance on a regular basis.
This tool is designed for internal use by Manatt teams to track deliverables with both detailed and high-level deadlines.
This tool is designed for internal use by Manatt teams to reflect recent team-wide activities and upcoming priorities; recent workstream-by-workstream outcomes and upcoming milestones; and upcoming strategic opportunities.
This tool is designed for internal use by Manatt teams to develop a meeting tracker and update and disseminate it regularly based on the evolving meeting schedule.
Use this worksheet to document the team’s feedback, including what went well and what could be done differently. Team members may also submit individual written feedback for inclusion. All feedback and recommendations will be summarized across workstreams for discussion as a full team.
Based on team input collected through the Engagement Debrief Worksheet and subsequent workstream and project-wide discussions, summarize key themes. This summary can be referred to when re-engaging the same client or initiating similar engagements with other clients.